It strikes a person who has lived some months in other parts of Italy, to see so very few clergymen at Venice, and none hardly who have much the look or air of a man of fashion.  Milan, though such heavy complaints are daily made there of encroachments on church power and depredations on church opulence, still swarms with ecclesiastics; and in an assembly of thirty people, there are never fewer than ten or twelve at the very least.  But here it should seem as if the political cry of fuori i preti[Footnote:  Out with the clergy.], which is said loudly in the council-chamber before any vote is suffered to pass into a law, were carried in the conversation rooms too, for a priest is here less frequent than a clergyman at London; and those one sees about, are almost all ordinary men, decent and humble in their appearance, of a bashful distant carriage, like the parson of the parish in North Wales, or le cure du village in the South of France; and seems no way related to an Abate of Milan or Turin still less to Monsieur l’ Abbe at Paris.

Though this Republic has long maintained a sort of independency from the court of Rome, having shewn themselves weary of the Jesuits two hundred years before any other potentate dismissed them; while many of the Venetian populace followed them about, crying Andate, andate, niente pigliate, emai ritornate[Footnote:  Begone, begone; nothing take, nor turn anon.]; and although there is a patriarch here who takes care of church matters, and is attentive to keep his clergy from ever meddling with or even mentioning affairs of state, as in such a case the Republic would not scruple punishing them as laymen; yet has Venice kept, as they call it, St. Peter’s boat from sinking more than once, when she saw the Pope’s territories endangered, or his sovereignty insulted:  nor is there any city more eminent for the decency with which divine service is administered, or for the devout and decorous behaviour of individuals at the time any sacred office is performing.  She has ever behaved like a true Christian potentate, keeping her faith firm, and her honour scrupulously clear, in all treaties and conventions with other states—­fewer instances being given of Venetian falsehood or treachery towards neighbouring nations, than of any other European power, excepting only Britain, her truly-beloved ally; with whom she never had a difference, and whose cause was so warmly espoused last war by the inhabitants of this friendly state, that numbers of young nobility were willing to run a-volunteering in her defence, but that the laws of Venice forbid her nobles ranging from home without leave given from the state.  It was therefore not an ill saying, though an old one perhaps, that the government of Venice was rich and consolatory like its treacle, being compounded nicely of all the other forms:  a grain of monarchy, a scruple of democracy, a dram of oligarchy, and an ounce of aristocracy; as the teriaca so much esteemed, is said to be a composition of the four principal drugs—­but can never be got genuine except here, at the original Dispensary.